Volume 3

The royal navy : a history from the earliest times to the present / by Wm. Laird Clowes. Assisted by Sir Clements Markham, Captain A.T. Mahan, U.S.N., H.W. Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, etc.

  • Clowes, W. Laird (William Laird), Sir, 1856-1905.
Date:
1897-1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The royal navy : a history from the earliest times to the present / by Wm. Laird Clowes. Assisted by Sir Clements Markham, Captain A.T. Mahan, U.S.N., H.W. Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    428/646 (page 402)
    [1778. victuallers must have been destroyed, and the army, of course, have fallen with us. D’Estaing, howevei’, had not spirit equal to the risk; at three o’clock we saw him bear off to the southward, and in a few hours he was out of sight.” Four days later, Howe, reporting these occurrences, wrote : “ The weather having been favourable the last three days for forcing en- trance to this port, I conclude the French commander has desisted.” It is clear that the experienced British admiral did not recognise the impossiljility of success for the enemy. After the demonstration of the ‘22nd, d’Estaing stood to the southward, with the wind at east. The British advice-hoats brought back word that they had kept company with him as far south as the Capes of the Delaware, and there had left him ninety miles from land. When their departure freed him from observation, he turned, and made for Narragansett Bay, an attack on which, in support of an American land force, had been concerted between him and Washing- ton. On the 29th he anchored three miles south of Rhode Island, and there awaited a suitable moment for forcing the entrance. Narragansett Bay contains several islands. The two largest, near the sea, are Rhode Island and Conanicut, the latter being the more westerly. Their general direction, as that of the Bay itself, is north and south; and by them the entrance is divided into three passages. Of these, the eastern, called Seakonnet, is not navigable above Rhode Island. The central, which is the main channel, is joined by the western above Conanicut, and thus the two lead to the upper Bay. The town of Newport is on the west side of Rhode Island, four miles from the main entrance. On tlie 30th of July, the day after the French fleet had arrived, two of its ships of the line, under command of the afterwards cele- brated Suffren, went up the western channel, anchoring within it near the south end of Conanicut. One of them, as she passed, was hulled twice by the British batteries. At the same time, two frig- ates and a corvette entered Seakonnet; whereupon the British abandoned and l)urned a sloop of war, the Kingfisher, 1(3, and some galleys there stationed. Tlie British general. Sir Robert Bigot, now withdrew his detachments from Conanicut, disabling the guns, and concentrated the l)ulk of his force in the southern part of Rhode Island and about Newport. Goat Island, which covers the inner harbour of the town, was still occupied, the main channel being commanded by its batteries, as well as by those to the north and south of it ujwn Rhode Island. On the 5th of August, Suffren's